Re: Telegraph

Linn W. Moedinger Wrote:
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> It seems that both the RGS and the EBT spaced
> their poles about 180 feet apart. Consistently
> they are 77 paces. I never had a wheel when I went
> out so that is about as accurate as I can get.

I'll wager it's 176 feet - that works out to 30 poles/mile.



> From all the photos I looked at, it appears
> that there were two lines running through
> Placerville, but only one of the lines went into
> the station. The station line appears to come off
> a double insulator bracket and drops down the pole
> to another point at about station eave level. I it
> then goes horizontally into the front alcove of
> the station on the Ridgway side. The return line
> does the same thing back to the pole line. This
> was later in the life of the railroad. Earlier
> photos show a slightly different arrangement with,
> I think, four wires indicating two lines in the
> station.

If you have John Norwood's "Rio Grande Narrow Gauge," check pp. 278-279. It's a survey of wires on the D&RGW - no details on the RGS, but one can infer general practices.

From "civilization," four Wires served Durango - RR 1, RR 3, WU 108, WU 109. It appears that they were routed through the WU office before continuing to the D&RGW station (probably for battery).

There's also a reference to an "S1" Superintendent's wire and an "S102" WU wire that must have been de-commissioned (only four wires show in later photos) or renamed.

RR 3 and WU 109 ended at Durango. RR 1 and WU 108 continued to Silverton. RR 1 was "repeated" on RR 2, which ran Durango - Farmington.

RR 1 was "presented" in every station and phone booth/box along the line. RR 3 was presented only in order stations (though there was probably a test point in the phone booths where the wire separated from the ROW). The WU wires would drop down to most, but not all, stations (Estrella, Osier were left off).


However, it looks like the RGS was worked from wires coming from Grand Junction:





That probably corresponds to four RR wires and two WU wires. Two wires continued to Ouray:



and two wires appear in Placerville:



so two apparently terminated in Ridgway.

Given that RR and WU wires appear to start and end in pairs, I think it's safe to assume that the wires leaving Ridgway are RR wires, and that a pair of WU wires ended there.

You reference a "return line," and that four wires indicate two "lines." These lines are earth-return, so each wire on an insulator is a separate communications channel (not two wires per channel, which would double the material cost). If your "return line" goes back up on the pole (instead of to ground), it's probably the second wire going into the station.

Those other two wires in earlier pictures may be a WU wire.



> I have been interested in what happens on loops
> such as Ophir and Gallagher. On Gallagher, the
> pole line clearly cuts off the loop and goes
> overland between the trestle by the road and the
> closest point on the higher line. Ophir appears to
> have four wires going to the station, underneath
> the ore tipple. I can’t tell for sure, but there
> appears to be wire lines cutting diagonally up the
> mountain between the low line and the high line in
> some photos. Up to that point, from Vance Jct. it
> appears to be a two line system. My conclusion is
> that they ran the two line system from where the
> diagonal wire line shows up in an out-and-back
> fashion to Ophir station. Same amount of wire but
> half the poles. Given the fairly frequent use of
> the telegraphone to report problems, cutting off
> these loops could result in some long hikes –
> particularly in bad weather.


There are several examples on the D&RGW where the telegraph line leaves the ROW. The most visible today are from Cumbres down to the booth at MP 333, and from the booth at MP 327.5 (near Apache Canon Road) and MP 322 (old Los Pinos siding). There were also cutoffs between roughly Mud Tunnel and Rock Tunnel, where the line dips into the Toltec Gorge; at the Big Horn section house (skipping Whiplash Curve); and at Lava (MP 289-291). At each departure point you will find a booth, which served not only as a communications point, but a testing point. If there were wire problems, you could isolate it to a certain section (and then presumably haul your tools down into rough territory).

Where a telegraph line "branched" it would appear exactly as you guess - an "inbound" and "outbound" section for each Wire.

There's another possibility - that the four wires represent a pair of wires that was abandoned at some point, salvaged where it was feasible, and "left for dead" where it was too much trouble to take them down.

Four wires here:





It kind of looks like the wires run up onto the hillside, then down into the station - hard to tell.

JAC